Power and Politics in a University ERP Implementation

Abstract

ERPs are expensive and widely adopted approaches to systems integration. However in both the corporate sector and the public sector ERPs implementations have been very problematical, with reports of widespread failure or only partial success. Very little research has been carried out into ERPs in the higher education sector and most of these have primarily taken the „business‟ perspective; the effects on the academic and service (student administration) domains have been overlooked. Furthermore, with the increasing corporatisation of universities and their expansion into the overseas student market, considerable tensions have arisen which make the implementation of an integrated system which meets the needs of all major stakeholders, particularly difficult. Since all large scale systems projects involve considerable change and information systems research shows that these changes are frequently met with resistance, it is proposed that a political perspective is useful to investigate the origins and effects of political behaviour. Recent reviews have argued that there is a need for a detailed explanation of how power influences information systems implementations and to further refine power related concepts. To address these shortcomings a multidimensional conceptual model is utilised which situates power and politics at the interpersonal and group level within the context of influences created by social, structural and technological movements. The use of French and Raven‟s (1959) theory of power bases and the Power/Interaction model developed by Raven (1992) allows the „influence‟ attempt to analysed in detail, including the motivation, selection of power bases, preparation for the attempt and assessment of success. This clarifies the way that influence attempts are carried out within the context of information systems implementation and provides a model which would be useful for future research The focus of the study is on the experiences of the service oriented student administration staff in a large Australian university. This group has not been studied in relation to ERP implementation, even though they represent the point of tension between the academic and corporate domains. In order to understand the context of their experiences, a qualitative approach is taken, to obtain a rich description of the case. Because the implementation of ERPs remains largely unchallenged, a critical stance is adopted which seeks to explore the dominant discourse.